


A Man in a Room, Gambling

by doctorcolubra



Series: Weird Therapy [1]
Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Suicide mention, Therapy, a magical journey into Richard's atrophied conscience, extremely mild but I'm covering my bases, self-directed ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 19:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13794924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorcolubra/pseuds/doctorcolubra
Summary: Jared wants Richard to go to therapy, and Richard wants Jared to be happy.  So he goes.





	A Man in a Room, Gambling

Jared has tried to broach the subject before.

The problem is that when Richard is at his twitchiest, he won’t sit still to talk about anything that isn’t related to code. Sometimes Jared has trouble getting an audience for budget issues, let alone a ticklish personal conversation about mental illness. Richard’s not a natural leader, to be perfectly frank, and he knows it, so criticisms tend to cut a little too deep. In his less romantic moments, Jared does indeed understand this. The Captain has flaws. The Captain is maybe even not that great at being a captain. But that’s what makes Richard worth following. The kind of person who _does_ naturally fall into the role of a CEO is usually corrupt, as Jared knows. Richard is more of a Cincinnatus type.

But he’s a Cincinnatus who needs therapy, so one way or another, Jared has to prod him into it. Not manipulating, not bullying, not even insisting, just giving him all the information that he needs to make a rational decision. This would be easy enough to do (Jared has a Google Doc of interesting and useful data about therapy, and a list of names), but only if Richard will sit through the conversation.

At one point, after the issue with Liz but before the HooliCon incident, Richard has been avoiding Jared for days, slipping out of the room when Jared walks in. Sensitive to the slightest hint of his presence. Moody about having to let Liz down easy, maybe. 

It reaches the point that Erlich notices, and he seems bored and under-stimulated enough to intervene. "You know, Jared, management is among the subtlest of arts. There's no need to be ashamed that business school couldn't teach it to you. For some of us it's inborn, that's all. Allow me to facilitate."

Jared takes a moment to realise what Erlich thinks he's offering to do. "Do you mean you'll talk to Richard for me?" 

"Better. I'll make him listen to you."

Erlich’s tactic is simple: he waits for the first frustration of the day and brings news of it to Richard, then absorbs the reaction before volleying back a staggering amount of utter hogwash. With Richard distracted, Jared enters. Both exits blocked. Checkmate.

The plan goes off without a hitch, and Jared inches into the room while Richard and Erlich are talking. It’s a normal sort of problem that Pied Piper often has: a state of chaos caused by the neglect of a simple chore. It’s possible that Erlich made it up, but equally likely that they really did mess something up again.

“Well, why didn’t _you_ pick it up?” Richard is saying, with that deer-in-the-headlights look he always has when he’s discovering a new crisis. “We had eight hours left before that deadline when the text came through, so there had to have been time—”

“Because, Richard, I was already embarked upon a Lurianic high,” Erlich began. “I mean I was _experiencing_ some molecules. I was understanding forbidden math on some 1P-LSD from an internet lab in San Benito County. I was Erowid high, my man. I was meeting plant spirits. The homegrown _P. cubensis_ had just kicked in. Not to be crass, but the body-load was heavy and the purging intense. There were Mandelbrots, open-eye visuals, colours looked brighter, and monks were right. The cocktail had me in hyperspace, where I battled the angry ghosts of my ancestors, then befriended them. Shit was Jungian in theme, Richard. I broke through. All was bliss, until a low-vibrational entity attached itself to my energy field and the whole night went sour. From then on, I was in damage control mode. Fortunately, I remembered my training. I had to drag myself home and hurriedly construct an emergency pillow fort. With my trusty bong Purple Pickle, I was soon watching David Attenborough and contemplating the structure of island riddims on Black Arts Temple Kush OG, a reward strain from my dispensary’s loyalty club. True quad, Richard. Incredible bag appeal. The stem reclaim from that morning was hitting, and I was in the process of wiping my memory on vintage Soviet benzos. I found out the next morning that I’d bought a piano on eBay. Many qualified redditors would agree that I had experienced ego death and a true square-brackets ten. Five stars, lock thread, goldmine. The upshot, Richard, is that I was in no condition to go anywhere or do anything.”

Pause. “I just—”

“I was very high. Also, Jared wants to talk to you.” Erlich nods toward Jared, who’s already beside him, having entered the room during the oration. “You guys need a minute?”

“Please. We do have a couple of matters to discuss,” says Jared. “Thanks, Erlich.”

“Actually, um, that’s not gonna work out right now,” says Richard, closing his laptop lid and tucking the machine under his arm as he gets up to leave. He didn’t freeze in the headlight glare for quite long enough, this time. “Because somebody was—was on a goddamn _Lurianic_ high and now I gotta take care of this, I have a lot of phone calls to make—”

“Richard, I hate to insist but if I could have fifteen minutes, you can time it by the clock—”

“Later, Jared, sorry. Later. I promise.”

* * *

But there’s no later. HooliCon comes and goes, Anton dies and lives again, and as the dust is settling, Richard finds that he can’t brush Jared off anymore. Or he could. He could take that letter of resignation and deal with it, which would probably be better for Jared in the long run, but what he can’t do is keep Jared here without listening to him. Not anymore.

That doesn’t make it easy, because Richard can smell it in the air when Jared sits him down: _this is going to be about you._

“I want you to know that you’re not trapped in this conversation,” Jared is saying. “I’ll admit that I wanted to get your attention for a minute, but if you want to stop talking you can. Still, I’d like you to hear me out, even if you don’t agree. Does that sound reasonable?”

Of course it does, of course it fucking does. Jared is always reasonable, and Richard is both ashamed of himself and irritable. The first one is causing the second: he gets touchy during those frequent periods when he hates himself more than usual. He’s had a lot of those lately. “Right, definitely, but look, Jared, you don’t have to do this thing where you talk to me like a hostage negotiator. Like I’m some kind of dangerous psycho—”

“That word’s not okay. But I guess we’re on topic,” Jared says with one of his diffident little _isn’t this lucky_ shrugs. “Because I did want to talk about therapy.”

“Wh—okay.” Whatever. _Whatever._ It’s not even a weird suggestion, after everything that’s been happening. Still, Richard holds out a little bit of hope that this isn’t…only about him. “Like some corporate thing, psychology of failing companies?”

“No, I mean regular therapy for you.”

“Like…Jared, I—this is going overboard a bit, don’t you think?”

“I’ve meant to talk with you about this for some time, so no, I don’t think it’s excessive. I think it’s about time you had your problems addressed properly, by a compassionate professional. Don’t you think you deserve that?”

“Jesus, man, I’m not…” Richard stalls out as he tries to think of some ending for that sentence. With anyone else, he would have tried _I’m not some sad broken problem child_ but that’s a bad choice. He settles on something that’s a little less offensive and a little more true: “I’m not the victim here, Jared.”

“It’s not about that.”

“I just, I don’t see myself on a couch talking about my childhood, you know?”

“Well, everybody’s different, and your childhood might not be very important for the work you do in therapy. Probably you’d be seeing a cognitive-behavioural therapist, since CBT has come to dominate first-line mental health care in America thanks in part to the court system. But it could be anything that you find helpful. And if this is inappropriate then I’m sorry,” he says, but it’s a bit…less deferential than usual. “But I have to be inappropriate. I have concerns about your mental health. I say this as your friend, not just as your CFO. Although I also say it as your CFO.”

“Jared, I know I fucked up, all right—” Richard lowers his voice halfway through that sentence. “I know that. And I wasn’t…it was _me_ , okay, the problem was me. I mean my, my morals. My ethics. I looked it up but I still don’t know what the difference is. But I mean that I _understand_ I was wrong. I’m not crazy. I was just wrong.”

“That’s probably a valuable insight, but nevertheless…” Jared pauses. “I want to know that it’s not going to happen again. And addressing this would take a certain amount of the guesswork out of that. You have serious anxiety problems. It’s impacted the company more than once, both directly and indirectly. Someone in the grip of an anxiety disorder run amok is naturally going to make poorer decisions. Stress floods the brain with cortisol, which causes people to take higher-risk chances for immediate rewards rather than planning for the future. This is especially true for men, there are studies. Your medical situation is your own business, but what has your doctor done for you? I’m asking to give you food for thought, not to interrogate you. These are rhetorical questions. This disorder is serious enough to interfere with your daily functioning, and indeed your daily functions. The vomiting, the bedwetting—”

“Night sweats.”

“The shrinking, the lack of sleep, I hardly need to go on. These are real. This is happening to your body, Richard,” Jared says, and his firm tone wavers for a second. “You told us your doctor tried to pitch an app to you, and then what? Has he talked about medication with you? Has he offered to recommend therapists? Has he done anything at all? Don’t answer me, I don’t want to compromise your privacy.”

“But what’s a therapist gonna do?” says Richard. “What’s she gonna tell me that I haven’t already thought of? ‘Oh, turns out you should chill, you should breathe deeper, you should do some—some yoga, some energy exercises, get some rad Gavin Belson mala beads or a red string—”

Jared is choosing to interpret this as receptive behaviour, apparently. “I’m glad you’re interested, and I’ve prepared some reading material for you about different techniques and schools of thought that contemporary therapists might subscribe to. Links to papers on the cortisol study, too. You might find it helpful to look through it. Do you want me to go ahead and make an appointment with somebody for you?”

Richard is kind of proud of Jared for railroading him like this, if he’s honest. It’s assertive. “After I read the stuff, though, right?”

“Might as well make the appointment first, I think,” says Jared. “You know, get everything all settled and ready. And if you decide it’s not for you then you can cancel.”

“The fuck I can,” Richard mutters, getting out his phone; the documents are already shared to his drive and if he doesn’t read them then that little _unread_ dot on the icons will bother him. And Richard doesn’t like to lie to the interface. Jared probably knows that. “I’ll go once. And, like, sometimes you don’t click with somebody. For no reason, who knows why. You don’t know. Anything could happen.”

“That’s true, but luckily, I know a number of therapists, and they all have networks of their own, so if you don’t like this suggestion then we’ll figure out someone who suits you better.” 

“Jared, just—look, you’re getting your way. Okay? Be a little gracious about it.”

“I hope I’m being very gracious, because I’m really happy that you’re doing this. And I’ve got someone good in mind for you. I feel self-conscious yet also excited about being a stereotype,” says Jared, “but my rabbi’s brother is a therapist.”

And he’s ashamed of it, but Richard’s first thought is _ugh._ Jared’s been poking into his heritage lately, attending a Reform shul that seems to be perfect for his own particular needs: there are old ladies there who treat him like a grandson, and urgently virtuous middle-aged activists, and retired couples that love bird-watching and community choirs. Jared stuff. Richard is really, truly happy for him, but has nothing in common with people like that. They’re too nice, and Richard isn’t, nor has he ever been. Shy isn’t the same thing as nice.

But none of that is stuff he wants to admit to Jared. Probably therapists are all extremely nice anyway. Weird career choice if they aren’t. The rabbi’s brother is probably as good as anyone Richard would pick at random from Yelp. “I guess seeing, like, a dude therapist would be good,” he agrees without enthusiasm. “Not that…like, not that I wouldn’t see a woman. Of course. I mean—like, if I have to pick, then maybe 53% in favour of a guy. I don’t have bad reasons or anything, just—”

“You don’t have to explain,” Jared says. “You can pick whoever you want for any reason you want. I only know this guy because Miriam’s mentioned him, and then I see Laura every week at the same practice. She’s always said he’s great.”

“Okay. Yeah. I’ll try it once,” Richard says, hoping to hit on a nice decisive CEO tone of voice but only sounding defeated. At the same time, he’s glad that Jared won. Jared deserves that.

* * *

The therapist’s office is in a weird goddamn place, of course. Not close to anything. Tucked in behind a wasteland mall, behind a vast palm-treed parking lot. When Richard tried to scope it out on Street View he was presented with the unnerving spectacle of a night scene—since when does the van go around at night? What the fuck for? 

Ugly building, too. Some half-assed architect has drawn a few extra lines to keep the place from being a completely featureless rectangle, but somehow that only makes it less memorable, an unsatisfying asymmetrical polygon. The same genius made the doors look a lot like the windows. Richard has to walk a complete circle around the place before figuring out where the entrance is. The sidewalk is totally unshielded from the offices within, no landscaping, only glass. Those huge windows all have a great view of this wandering stumblefuck in a hoodie who can’t find the door.

Inside, it’s too dark. The silent corridors are half-lit, with the same uncanny feeling of a high school at night, the floors washed and waxed without a footprint. Richard’s getting that _maybe this is the wrong place_ feeling, but his phone confirms that he’s standing on the spot he was trying to get to. After a minute’s wandering through a ghost-town of shuttered offices, he finds a directory on the wall by the elevator. Three dentists, two orthodontists with the same surname, accountants, and then:

` Palo Alto Counseling  
Kwan, L - PhD - 312  
Brevda, M - MSW - 312`

Jared gets the one with a real doctorate. Typical. Who puts letters after their name for a Master’s degree, anyway? Richard rides the elevator up to another dark room, where an admin assistant smiles at him pityingly, as if he’s a cancer patient, and hands him a clipboard full of paperwork. Consent forms, stuff about privacy, gender and pronouns, next of kin, _do you ever have thoughts about hurting yourself or ending your life?_

Obviously everybody does. Richard hesitates and then checks _no_ because he doesn’t want some guys in white coats to take him away. _Nice. Real 90s hack material. I bet you have two good minutes on padded cells too. Jared goes to this office every week and he’s fine. It’s fine._

But it kind of isn’t. Boxes of tissues are everywhere, three on one coffee table in the waiting room area, which tells a lonely tale. There’s a chalkboard on one wall of the room, more like a school than a hipster café, and someone’s written a Thich Nhat Hanh quote up there. _Because you are alive, everything is possible._ Jesus, this is the worst. Uncomfortable sincerity. Van Gogh posters on the wall. Really? Okay. Relatable gunshot wound suicides. Totally good and normal. Another one next to the water cooler by Gustav Klimt. Richard gets his phone out to see if that guy was crazy too. 

The results from the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry are inconclusive, but then the therapist comes down the hall. “Richard?”

“Yeah. I’m…the only one here. So that’s me. Sorry, hi, um—”

“I’m Mark, hi,” the guy says, shuffling a file folder from one arm to the other before offering his hand. Glasses, mustache, Bernie Sanders type accent, intense Dad vibe. Not like Richard’s dad, but somebody’s. “Come on in, you can leave the clipboard there at the desk with Dana. You want coffee or anything? Water?”

Richard isn’t prepared for a question like this, and predictably fumbles. “No, no thank you, I mean—wait, um, actually—yeah, yes, that would be…” It would be something he can hold in his dumb hands, that’s what. “Really nice, thanks. Sorry. Just, um, just water.”

“Great. C’mon back.” Mark gets a bottle of Aquafina from a bar-fridge by the admin assistant’s desk and leads the way to his office.

The building’s irregular design has bestowed windows on this one room, which is more of a solarium—huge floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, plus a skylight. The effect is not charming. Thick grey curtains cover up the glaring asphalt wasteland outside, and make the shapes of passing cars ghostly, as if seen through fog. The air conditioning is turned up high.

“Yeah, me and Laura roshamboed for the office that has real walls,” Mark says as he rummages around in a file cabinet. “She won so I’m in the greenhouse. I should start growing some White Widow in here, make a few extra bucks. Have a seat, man, how are you doing?”

Richard sits down on the couch, a grey Ikea special covered in brightly-coloured cushions. Forced whimsy. “Uh, I dunno, I’m at a therapist’s office so I guess I’m not doing great. But I’m fine in like, the social pleasantries sense. We’re doing pleasantries, right? This isn’t…”

“What you’re paying for?” Mark sits down in the chair opposite the couch. “I’m trying to ease you in. But okay, what brings you to a therapist’s office today? What’s not going great?”

“Everything. I don’t know. My friend made me come.”

“They made you?”

Already Richard’s getting fact-checked. Great. “No, he just…told me that I gotta do it. We work together—um, this is Jared I’m talking about. That’s important, he’ll be coming up a lot. Because we work together.”

“Jared, okay. Why does Jared think you need to be here?”

Richard picks at the label on the water bottle. “Um, lots of reasons. Probably, probably lots. I have, like, pretty bad anxiety? I throw up a lot, I was getting night sweats for awhile, and my GP would tell me it was stress from work. And I’d think to myself, ‘okay, cool, so there’s nothing I can do about this unless I sell my company,’” he says. “And maybe not even then, because the doctor told me this story about a guy who tried to fucking kill himself because he sold his company, or he didn’t sell it—that story fucking…haunts me.”

“ _That’s_ what the doctor told you?” Mark says, eyebrows raised. “In, what, a ten-minute office visit?”

“Something like that. It was like a cautionary tale, I guess. That’s unprofessional, right? He’s kind of a terrible doctor.”

“Speaking for myself, I usually don’t tell anecdotes about suicide in ten-minute conversations. What was his treatment plan like, other than telling you the symptoms are stress-related? Did you guys talk about medication?”

Richard shakes his head, still not making eye contact. “No, I mean, we didn’t, but…that’s not my style. I don’t want to be on medication, I’m not a medication guy.”

He’s expecting some PSA about how there’s no shame in taking drugs, but Mark only shrugs. “Okay. Well, even if you don’t want to take meds, do you think it would help to see a doctor who’s more familiar with mental health stuff? Someone who’s not gonna freak you out when you go to ask about the night-sweats? Because we can play matchmaker there, we’ve got lists of recommended doctors.”

“I guess that’d help. Yeah. But, um, sorry—sorry, I got off track,” Richard says, realising that without even meaning to, he just told the most self-serving version of the truth. “The anxiety is…like yeah, it’s bad, but that’s not why Jared wanted me to come. I don’t think. It’s because I did some stupid and awful stuff and this is…” Richard finally remembers to open the water bottle, cracking the cap off its plastic collar. “I think this is my last chance. You know? So I gotta be here.”

“Hm.” Mark is making notes. “You sound like maybe you feel—and tell me if I’m wrong—that having to go to therapy is like a punishment for hurting your friend’s feelings.”

“No, that’s not wrong. I mean, sorry,” Richard adds, because sometimes he still thinks about Dang and his wounded dignity: _this is work, this is my work._ “It’s your job, I shouldn’t act like it’s the gulag.”

“I’m not offended. But if you feel like therapy is something that’s _happening_ to you because of something you did wrong, that’s sort of a passive headspace to be in. Right?”

“I guess.”

“If you come here out of guilt then okay, we can work with that. Guilt’s not so bad, if you don’t let it fester. We can work with your sincere desire to be a better friend. Absolutely. But whatever your reasoning is, it’s gotta come from you. You have to be here on purpose.”

“I know. I do,” Richard says. “I mean…that _is_ what I want, I want to be a better friend. A better boss, a better person. Even though—wait, you don’t even know what I did.”

“So tell me.”

* * *

Richard tells him. As always, he’s a rambling storyteller, and Mark nudges him along with questions to keep things from going off the rails. What does the company do again? Who’s Winnie? Who’s Anton? What’s a pineapple in this context? Making notes the whole time. Richard can only imagine what that legal pad is going to look like at the end of this session—probably little drawings of Edvard Munch-like screaming heads and guillotines with annotations like _asshole techboy social parasite_ and _report this fuck to FBI cybercrime division_ and _penis burns._

But the guy’s a pro, and when the story’s over, he nods slightly while looking down at his notes and then says in a perfectly non-judgemental tone, “Poopfare, huh?”

“Yeah. I know, yeah.”

Mark looks up at him. “So why’d you do it?”

“I really—I know it was wrong. It was stupid, and petty, and Dinesh was right, Peacefart would’ve been a better joke. I couldn’t even clown on this guy properly.”

“I’m not asking you for self-flagellation, it’s okay. But can you say a little more about like…” Mark gestures with the hand holding the pen. “What set you off about this guy? Winnie’s boyfriend. What was going on there?”

“I don’t know.”

It’s a pretty weak parry, and Mark presses him a little further. “Walk me through it. This guy is telling you about his program, his app, and you’re thinking…”

“I’m thinking that this guy is fucking deluded,” Richard says. “Like he’s going to be Alfred Nobel with a phone game. Come on. I _had_ an idea that could change the goddamn world and look what I had to give up for it, look what I had to do.”

“Look what…”

“I had to drag myself and my friends through the _dirt_ , is what. In fact—in fact— _I'm_ the one who was feeling like Alfred Nobel, okay? Watching a series of explosions ripple across a crowd in the dark, fucking _maiming_ people right in front of me. With my invention. My work. It wasn't even a one-and-done deal, either. There's always a next time, and a next time, and a next time. I did all that and I barely kept our heads above water.”

“It didn’t even buy safety.”

“Yeah! Like, what else am I gonna have to do in order to build what I want to build? This guy thinks he can get everything he wants and still be clean as a whistle. You know? Fuck him. Like it’s so easy to be the good guy, like it’s something you get to pick. So. I gave him a tiny bit of the degradation that I go through with trying to make something good happen. If I'm dirty, he's dirty. Poopfare. It’s minuscule, it’s not even a big deal.” He hears himself saying it and then wilts back against the couch cushions, scrubbing his hand over his face. “Listen to me, Jesus Christ, I’m a fucking freak. This is the kind of shit that nearly cost us everything. I’m a nutjob.”

“Well, not so fast, this is interesting,” Mark says, unperturbed. “So you resented him for having a status that you wish you had, that is, being respected for your contributions…but as you see it, this guy hasn’t earned that status. His work has no real worth, as far as you can tell, and you think his moral status is suspect as well. He’s posturing. And maybe it seems like this town is no place to be riding a high horse. You feel degraded by this whole process and you thought it was only right for this guy to experience that too.”

“Yeah.” A second ago Richard only felt crazy, and now he feels crazy but also aware of every twist and contortion. It’s somehow worse. “Yeah, I’m garbage, exactly, thank you.”

“Let’s not draw conclusions, let’s stay in the moment here. Listen, I understand that you acted impulsively. Everybody does it sometimes. You had a moment where you felt all this, and right then you decided—Poopfare. And later the consequences turned out to be severe. But the impulse came from what sounds like a very deep dissatisfaction with your job, with your company. With what your company seems to be asking from you. Is that fair to say?”

It might be too fair. Richard shakes his head. “No, I mean, sort of. But I’m not…I don’t work for my dad’s Nissan dealership or something. It’s not like I’m a normal person with a bad job. It’s _my_ company. If my job is stressing me out, then whose fault is that?”

“You talk about feeling forced to take these measures, though.”

“Well, I’m full of shit.”

It seems like the right thing to say, maybe even manly. Taking responsibility for his awful behaviour. But Mark clearly wants a little more from him, and lets the statement hang in the air for awhile, watching Richard’s face.

Richard’s the one who cracks first. “I mean—sure, technically I wasn’t being forced. I could’ve gone to Melcher right away. Just let Pied Piper die. I’d already made so many mistakes even before this, and I could have thrown in the towel. But I…the idea matters. To me, at least. And if I could just _do_ my idea, the impact could be huge. In a good way. That sounds fake, doesn’t it?”

“Is it fake?”

“No. But it sounds like it is.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because every time I try to keep control over my work, people think it’s all about ego and not—I mean, look, I want credit. I don’t need my own tequila brand, I’m not an asshole, but this is probably the only thing I’m ever going to do,” Richard says, and his voice hits an unexpected patch of gravel there, like his own bleakness has caught him by surprise. “I can’t have healthy relationships, I can’t see myself as a father ever, and even as a coder, ideas like this don’t happen every day. If I do anything memorable while I’m alive, this is it.”

“Wow. No wonder you’re feeling pressured,” says Mark. “That’s a lot of pressure.”

“I just said another fucked up thing, didn’t I? Algorithms aren’t like kids.”

“I’m not shocked. Lots of people I talk with, their work is everything for them. It’s the past, it’s the present, it’s the future. It’s like they think it’s the only part of themselves that’s permanent. So an algorithm in place of a family, in place of a husband or a wife, it doesn’t sound so unusual,” Mark says. “It sounds lonely, that’s all.”

“Permanent,” Richard repeats, snagged on that word.

“Yup. They die, the work goes on. What’s that line—life is short and art is long. Hippocrates. I think. One of those guys.” Mark sets his pen down for a moment, stretching his fingers. “So what does he do, your son? Your algorithm-child, I shouldn’t assume its gender. What does it do? It compresses, you said. Tell me more about the broader impact.”

Richard’s still thinking about loneliness and permanence, and is caught off-guard by the question. “Broader?”

“We’re talking about changing the world here, so what’s it gonna change? I’m asking this extremely naively,” says Mark. “I’m not a STEM guy. Barely passed my statistics course.”

“Okay, well…” Richard casts around for an example. “You know the Raspberry Pi?”

“I can tell from the way you said it that I don’t.”

“It’s a single-board computer, like the size of a credit card. Super simple, dirt cheap, and this foundation’s selling them to developing countries so that kids there can still learn computer science even though they’d ordinarily never have the chance,” Richard says. He’s been getting better at explaining to normies, with practice. “But these computers are so small and basic that they’re limited, they can’t run big complicated apps. That’s how something as simple as smaller files can make computers accessible to more people.”

“So they can learn to code?”

“So they can learn to do anything. Single-board computers are especially great for scientific applications, if you build clusters, and people’ve been using them for simple robotics too. I mean, coding is going to be like basic literacy before too long. And building a high-end computer, and not even just bitcoin or gaming rigs—that eats up tons of natural resources. Energy, minerals like tantalum and coltan, petroleum products, everything. Server farms represent a huge environmental impact. And they’re an eyesore,” Richard adds, remembering how that had persuaded the Pied Piper Irrigation guy. “If we can do what we need to do on simpler hardware, that’s better for the planet. Right?”

“You got me there, I’m a fan of the planet. I’m not completely sure about drafting everyone into coding, though, I don’t like that idea. Can they use their tiny computers to read poetry instead?”

Richard knows he’s being teased mildly, and as usual doesn’t like it. “I guess. But that's how much difference the algorithm could make just on its own. The new internet, if I'm right, if Peter Gregory was right, that could change everything. It would—I'm sorry, this sounds narcissistic, but it would be a big deal on the level of the printing press. I'm not crazy.”

"Look, from now on, I'm the only one in this room who gets to say who's crazy and who's a narcissist and who's a nutjob. I'm invoking my professional stature," Mark says with a smile. “As a prestigious clinical social worker, otherwise known as not-a-doctor. All right, so your work really will be able to do good in the world, if you can build it. And you’re telling me that in the process, you’re making a lot of sacrifices. So many that it makes you angry to see someone else who has the same goals but isn’t sacrificing as much as you. How do you balance that out?” 

“Balance it?”

“Yeah, how do you know this is worth all the trouble? Or is that part in doubt as well, what do you think?”

“I don’t really think about it.”

“Ah.”

“I told Jared…this is another one of my worst moments ever,” Richard says, and when Mark gestures for him to go on, he shakes his head. “No, um…fuck it, man, pretend I didn’t bring that one up.”

“Not ready?”

“I don’t want you to hate me.”

“It’s pretty rough stuff, huh?”

“I had like, a whole bender of doing rough stuff. But this one was—it wasn’t the biggest thing. But it was still the worst. I didn’t even know how to apologise for it because it felt like mentioning it again would be…” Richard trails off. He takes a Kleenex from the box even though he doesn’t need it. “Like he just got out of the shower and boom, there I am throwing mud on him again.”

“You didn’t want to stir it up and upset him.”

“Right.” Richard does not want to tell the story of _Uncle Jerry’s Game_ so he doesn’t, and says, “Jared had problems with me, anyhow. Like I was telling you. Completely justifiably. And I told him to pretend it wasn’t happening, which is what I was doing too.”

“Did it work? Pretending?”

“I guess so. Like—no, definitely not, I should have listened to him, I should have listened to myself. But on a practical level, it did work. The company held together. I'm not saying that makes it right, but did it _work_? Yes. This time.”

“Okay. But let me lead you back to the question I had before. You gave things up, you sacrificed, essentially you gambled, and your company held together. Worth it? And is it going to be worth it the next time crisis strikes?”

“I’m supposed to say no.”

“You can say whatever’s true.”

Richard searches inside himself for an honest _no_ but can’t quite dredge one up. “I don’t know. I can’t predict the future. But I know that in this town you get ahead or you go to the wall. If your idea is _good_ and not, whatever, finding a woman’s erect nipples with GPS, then you have to go all out to protect it. You gotta…you have to make sure it lives.”

“So you’re being a mama grizzly,” Mark says. “Sure. But you’re saying—it sounds like you don’t want to set limits on what you would do, how far you would go.”

“Well, c’mon, like I wouldn’t kill anybody.”

“All right, there we go, we have a limit. That’s good. That means we can weigh decisions better. You see where I’m going with this, so I’d like it if you could think about it a little more on your own time. What are some more limits? How many things can you name that are definitely more valuable to you than work? Think about it and get back to me.”

“Okay. I can do that, sure.”

“I have another question, can you handle two questions?”

“Yeah. Lay it on me.”

“Winnie’s boyfriend. I’m still interested in this guy, I’m sorry. The Poopfare thing strikes me as a sort of…well. You see him as a sort of would-be competitor, like he’s not good enough at his job to be a real threat, but in his own head, he’s doing much better than you. Is that the situation, do I have that right?”

“He definitely thinks he’s doing better than me.”

“And your opinion is that he’s not.”

“He’s full of shit.”

“Then why try to take him out? You’ve touched on this already, but I’m curious. The Poopfare thing was an impulsive spasm of frustration, I get that, but you picked a target for it and this is the guy you picked. I think that matters. Did you feel like, in a sense, he really is succeeding? That he has something you wish you had?”

“What, like biceps? No. It’s not about Winnie, either. She’s just the reason I had to talk to this dipshit and be polite.”

“I didn’t think Winnie was that much of a factor, no. You didn’t have a lot to say about her other than the tabs-spaces thing. But this guy had something you wanted.”

Richard doesn’t know what the implication is. “I wasn’t…attracted to—are you asking if I’m gay?”

“I wasn’t assuming sex.”

“Because I’m…well, super bad with women, but I don’t…okay, yeah, never mind. Um, I don’t…are you allowed to come right out and tell me what you think? Do I have to guess?”

“Usually works better if you figure it out on your own. But it’s your first day and we’re easing you in. This guy, the way you describe him, he just sounds dumb and happy and comfortable, and that’s specifically the part that made you angry. He’s invested his energy in things you’ve rejected. He goes to the gym to get those biceps, he’s at ease with women, he seems to have a clear conscience, and he’s working on something trivial rather than something revolutionary. You’ve put all your money on red and he’s put it all on black. Right? And your reaction is…”

“I _was_ jealous of him,” Richard says, beginning to follow. “Not because of Winnie, but…everything else, yeah, okay.”

“Yup. If you’re jealous of the guy who did the opposite of what you did, maybe that’s a clue. I think something like that is probably the reason why you couldn’t resist the urge. Those emotions had to come out somehow, this frustration and jealousy and even grief for the things you’ve shut out of your life. And I think maybe you should listen to that part of yourself. That’s my thesis, what do you think?”

“Maybe.” It’s gentler than Jared’s assessment of Poopfare, which makes Richard worry that this is nothing but feel-good bullshit. But it does sound like the howling maelstrom of desperate misery that was going on in Richard’s head at the time. “Yeah, that…okay, that’s probably—that might not be wrong.”

“So what if there’s another chance? What if you can still change your bet? What if you could invest your time and your energy differently?”

“Pivot,” Richard corrects him, smiling a bit to himself. “That’s what we say in the Valley. Like a moral pivot.”

“A pivot in how you treat people, including yourself, yeah.”

“And we do this with therapy.”

“That’s usually how I close the deal.”

“Fuck.” Richard has torn his Kleenex to shreds, a fine snowfall of paper in his lap. “I gotta, huh?”

“No, you don’t.”

Therapy is the only plausible plan he has for becoming a better person, and being better is the only way to keep Jared happy, so that doesn’t leave much room for debate. “Well. I need to,” he says after a moment.

“Okay. Good amendment, I like that.”

* * *

When Richard gets home to the hacker hostel, what he wants is to go straight to his room, close the door, and maybe lie on the floor for awhile. It’s cooler down there when he feels overheated and lightheaded from anxiety, and the floor feels sturdier than his loft bed—most of the time he gets a sort of primal satisfaction from being high up and safe, like a chimp in a tree, but when he’s mentally fucked up he thinks too much about who put this piece of shit Ikea thing together. Erlich? Someone even less habile? It was there when he moved in. It could fall apart any second. An earthquake could do it. That’d be just perfect. One concussion and Richard’s career could be toast. He needs his brain. His shitty, shitty brain.

But he doesn’t go straight to his room, and instead goes to find Jared, who’s preparing an afternoon snack with the slow, attentive care of a Buddhist monk. “Hey.”

“Hi. Everything go okay at Laura’s office?”

“Yeah, um, it was actually…” Talking about this is the last thing Richard wants to do, but he’s doing it. Pivoting requires decisive action. “I’m gonna see him again. I think it’ll help me, he seems really…I think he gets it, you know?”

Jared smiles and does that unconscious maternal gesture of his, his palm flat over his heart. “Oh, that’s good, I was hoping you’d get along.”

“Yeah,” Richard says, almost cutting him off because he’s still stressed out but determined to say this stuff. All the things he’s been thinking about on the way home from the office. “It was really…a good idea. It was. And I’m glad you were thinking of me. I don’t…I mean, like I don’t have any friends I don’t work with, you know? Or who I haven’t worked with in the past. You guys are it, kind of. So even though it was awkward to bring up in, like, a work context…um, I’m glad you did it. Sorry I was a baby about making the appointment. Thank you. That’s all.”

“Richard.” This, too, is familiar. Jared is easily overcome when people thank him, and Richard wants that to stop. To reach a point where simple appreciation is no longer an overwhelming novelty. But getting to that point will take awhile, and meanwhile that means making Jared cry a little more often, but for good reasons. “That’s very…that’s kind of you. I—please excuse me for a few minutes, I need to compose myself.”

And he picks up his plate and leaves the kitchen, moving with the stiff dignity of an old ballerina who was injured on the job, something else that’s so particularly _Jared_ that Richard would miss it. If he were gone.

They both need a few minutes. Richard goes to his room and yeah, he does lie on the floor, but it feels a little better than usual. Maybe it feels like he’s doing the right thing.


End file.
